Hazard of the Hills Page 4

  “What does she do?”

  “She’s a teacher. Not on Zoom or somewhere they meet face-to-face, obviously, since she’s in the middle of a coffee shop. But people complete online units, and she grades them, gives feedback, suggests additional resources, that sort of thing. For online accreditation.”

  “They don’t just have the computer mark the tests?” Jones asked.

  “If there is a multiple-choice section, then yes, the computer will mark that portion and just give Evie the results. But there are short answers, essays, oral reports on video, all kinds of different responses. And computers don’t do very well at that kind of thing.”

  “Ah.” Jones and Margie nodded. “So she would be at the coffee shop right now?”

  “She had to go in to the physical campus today. It’s in Red Deer. A bit of a drive, but she doesn’t have to be there in person very often.”

  “So what time did she leave this morning?”

  “I don’t know. I slept until eight. She was gone when I got up.” He looked from Margie’s face to Jones’s. “That’s not unusual. She sometimes gets up at five, five-thirty. Goes for a walk or run. Gets started on her work early so that she will be done by early afternoon. Then she has time in the afternoon and evening for family or other things.”

  “Sounds like a reasonable plan,” Jones agreed. “If you can get up that early.”

  “Me, I can’t. But her body is set differently than mine. For her, sleeping in until eight would be impossible. But so is staying up until midnight.”

  “So you keep different schedules and don’t try to match each other’s rhythms.”

  “Yeah. When we’re together, we’re together. If we have different things to do, that’s okay too. We’re both open to the other person being independent and having a life of their own. That’s what works for us.”

  Margie wondered if this was the new euphemism for an “open relationship.” Polyamory of some flavor.

  Vance looked at Jones, raising his brows. “So… I’ve answered your questions. Now you want to tell me what this is about? Is Evie in trouble for something? Outstanding parking tickets?” He smiled, waiting for an explanation that he was sure would be bland and unworrying.

  “Mr. Vance, I’m sorry to give you this bad news, but Evie’s body was found this morning. She is dead.”

  His mouth fell open. He looked back and forth at them, gave a little smile as if it must be a joke he was supposed to find funny. Maybe they were recording him and wanted to see if he would cry and wail, then they would tell him he had just been punked. Margie and Jones both continued to look at him steadily, waiting for it to sink in. For him to see their grave expressions and realize that no, it was not a joke. It was the end of the relationship and the start of a new life that he had not anticipated.

  “My… Evie? That can’t be. Are you sure it’s her? Maybe someone… stole her wallet or her computer. If something had happened to her, wouldn’t I know it…?”

  “Some people do get premonitions,” Jones offered. “But most people don’t. For most people, it is quite a shock. Like for you.”

  “She was just here. I looked in on her before I went to bed. She was fast asleep. Everything was just fine. Normal.”

  “You sleep in separate rooms?” Jones asked.

  “Yes. It’s easier that way, with us going to bed and getting up at different times. Trust me, there’s always time for intimacy whether you’re sleeping in the same room or not. We just have two beds to choose from.” He gave a little laugh. He’d explained this before. Their friends probably all thought they were a little weird. He had the patter memorized. It came out automatically, without the appropriate emotion.

  “Well, if one of you snores, that makes a lot of sense,” Margie offered.

  “No, not usually. But Evie talks in her sleep. Or gets up to write or work on the computer when she can’t sleep. And we’re up and down at different times. Of course, there’s Ada too. She still gets up the night sometimes, wet or with nightmares. So one of us can take care of her without waking the other one up.”

  “How do you decide which one of you takes care of her?”

  “She’s big enough to get out of bed herself, so she chooses which room she goes to.” He hesitated. “Usually me.”

  “Dads are more fun at night?” Jones asked. “Big surprise.”

  They were both watching him carefully, waiting for it to sink in and start becoming real to him. It was easy to chatter on about Ada and their domestic life and not really think about what they had said. He could almost forget it.

  Almost.

  Tears gathered at the corners of Vance’s eyes. “She can’t be dead,” he said pleadingly. “There’s been some kind of mistake.”

  “We will need to verify her identity. At this time, a visual match has been made, comparing her face to the picture on her driver’s license. But we’ll need something more definitive than that. Don’t worry about that part right now. What we are going to need you to talk about right now is the last time that you saw Evie, and what has happened since then.”

  “I just told you. I looked in on her before I went to bed. She was asleep. I went to sleep. I got up around eight when Ada got up. Had some coffee, puttered around on the computer. That’s it. Played with Ada, gave her breakfast. It’s summer, so she doesn’t have any preschool to get to. It’s just her and me today, until Mommy gets home… at two o’clock or so.” He swiped at a tear on his cheek with the back of his hand. “Only…”

  Only this time, Mommy wasn’t ever coming home. She never would again.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “You said that Evie would get up early to walk or run or work. And that sometimes she got up in the middle of the night when she couldn’t sleep.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you don’t know what time she got up this morning or last night and left the house.”

  “No.”

  “Does she take her car or transit?”

  “Her car, usually.” Vance got up from his seat and walked to the back of the house, where he apparently looked through a connecting door into the garage. He returned, looking stunned. “Her car is in the garage. So she didn’t go out to one of her favorite coffee shops. She just went… out for a walk?”

  “Apparently.” Jones waited to see what his response would be. That this was normal? Unusual behavior? That she had been anxious lately and the separate bedrooms were still quite a new arrangement?

  Vance shrugged and scratched his forehead. His arms were shaking. He sat back down. “I… don’t know. I have no idea what to think of this. I just thought when I got up this morning that she’d already left for work. I didn’t even know there was anything wrong. I wouldn’t have known until this afternoon.”

  “You don’t talk or text during the day?”

  “Well, often, yes. We send each other messages or relax for a few minutes and call to see how the other one is. But there isn’t anything set, you know. If one of us is super busy or stressed, then we might get through the day without ever connecting with each other. And then we just try to have a nice evening together and get caught up. Even if we had gone all day without talking to each other or without getting a text from her, I wouldn’t have been worried that something was wrong.”

  Margie made a couple of discreet notes in her notepad.

  “What… happened to her?” Vance asked tentatively. “Was it a car accident or a heart attack?”

  He seemed to have forgotten that the car was still in the garage. He was just looking for something that would make sense. People didn’t just die without warning in his world.

  “The autopsy hasn’t been completed yet,” Jones said. “But it looks like it was a fall. An accident.”

  “She fell and… hit her head, or something?” Vance asked. “Is that what you mean?”

  “We won’t know for sure until we get the ME’s report. But please try not to obsess over that. From the preliminary information we have, it was very quick. She did not suffer.”

  “But… a fall. What kind of freak thing is that? People don’t just die from a fall. Maybe they get a broken bone. Maybe.” He shook his head. “They don’t die.”

  “I’m sorry. We’ll provide you with as much information as you need later, when we have it. For now, you’re just going to have to be satisfied with what we can give you. It is an active investigation and we’re limited in what we can tell you.”

  “An active investigation. You mean you’re from…”

  “We are homicide detectives,” Margie confirmed.

  “You mean this was murder? You’re investigating this as a murder?”

  “No, Mr. Vance. We believe it was an accident. But each case needs to be investigated until we are satisfied that there was nothing suspicious about it. No foul play.”

  “There couldn’t have been. No one would ever do anything to hurt Evie. She was so kind and sensitive. I don’t know of anyone who didn’t like her.”

  Jones smiled reassuringly at him. “She was well-liked? And nothing had happened lately to stress her out? Getting up late at night or early in the morning wasn’t because something was on her mind? Worrying her?”

  “She worried about everything.” He shrugged and puffed out his cheeks, then let the air go. “She’s the kind of person who always got all twisted up about injustices. People or animals or protected areas that were being threatened. She wanted to live in harmony with nature and with everyone around her. Hated hearing anything about child abuse or cruelty to animals. Always taking up a new cause.”

  “And what was bothering her the most recently?”

  “I don’t know. There was the residential school thing. That bothered her a lot. And our, uh, discussions over Ada and her diet, and whether it was okay for me to feed her meat when she was with me and we were eating out somewhere. Evie kept a vegetarian household,” he explained. “And everything had to be cruelty free, but she didn’t try to force other people to do the same things as she did. I’m not vegetarian, but I eat vegetarian when I’m here. But not when I go out. I figured Ada should be allowed to choose when we went out too. At least to be exposed to other foods. I told Evie that when people are deprived of a thing for their whole lives—sugar, or meat, or alcohol, or whatever—then they just go crazy when they are old enough to make their own decisions or have their own money. The kids without any self-control or adults who are immediately addicted, that’s because their parents kept them from experiencing those things. If they had allowed some choice and moderation instead…”

  “So you wanted to be able to raise your daughter to be an omnivore.” Jones asked.

  “Yes. Or to choose for herself.”

  As if a two- or three-year-old was old enough to make a choice like that. A child of that age would happily choose a grilled cheese diet. Or a pizza pocket diet. Preschoolers were not well-known for making wise, well-balanced decisions.

  Margie didn’t look up from the notes she was making in her notepad as she asked her question. Jones would be watching him carefully for his reaction. “How intense did these discussions get?”

  “How intense?” Vance sounded for a moment like he didn’t understand, then all at once, he did. “No, it wasn’t like that. We didn’t fight. There was never any violence in our relationship. Evie would never have stood for that. Neither of us were inclined that way.”

  “Raised voices?”

  “No. Well… maybe raised voices. But no threats, no violence. Just… active debate.”

  Margie nodded and looked up to assess his face. No obvious tells. But she had been fooled before. People could lie well, were psychopaths, or had another reason for not feeling guilty about what they had done or the stories they were telling her. She could rely on her eyes and ears only so much.

  “Was there anyone else around last night? Company over for wine?”

  “No. Just Evie and me and Ada. And Ada was off to bed, of course. So it was just the two of us. Watching some TV, talking about our days, relaxing at the end of a long day.”

  So no witnesses.

  “What was Evie’s day like? What did she tell you about it?”

  He thought back, licking his lips. “Umm… well…” He rubbed at the corners of his eyes again, though they didn’t seem to be producing any more tears. “Pretty much the same as usual. She has her work. Sometimes she tells me about funny answers students have put on tests. Computer problems she might have been frustrated by. The meeting in Red Deer was kind of out of the blue, I hadn’t known that she was going out there.”

  “Did she seem concerned or agitated about that?”

  “No. No, I don’t think so.”

  “Did she seem relaxed? Say or do anything out of the ordinary?”

  “I really can’t think of anything. You don’t think that something happened and someone killed her, do you? That doesn’t make any sense. She was a mom. An online teacher. Not the kind of person who attracts a lot of attention. No enemies or jealous coworkers.”

  “The two of you saw other people?” Margie asked. She kept her voice casual, as if this would be a normal arrangement. They were sleeping in separate rooms, after all. They might very well have other relationships, approved by the other.

  But Vance’s face portrayed shock. “Saw other people? Certainly not! Why would you think that?” He looked suddenly more anxious. “Was there something that made you think there was someone else? She wasn’t… with another man, was she? Or in a hotel, or…” He shuddered, scaring himself with the direction of his thoughts.

  “No, nothing like that,” Margie assured him.

  “We’re just covering all the bases,” Jones said blandly. As it was natural to ask how many other lovers a spouse or intimate partner might have. With the direction society was headed, it seemed like there were more and more of those “open” relationships going on than ever. Or maybe people just talked about it more, with the explosion of personal information being revealed on social media. What was a shocking secret a hundred years ago was now a social media post.

  “We were committed to each other. We were exclusive. Neither of us saw anyone else.”

  “You didn’t have any female friends that you saw occasionally?”

  “Friends, yes. But not lovers. That’s different.”

  “Did you see them with Evie, or on your own?”

  “On my own. We didn’t share a lot of friends. We had very different interests, weren’t into the same things.”

  “And Evie saw people on her own. Female and male.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “And it never concerned you? You were never jealous or suspicious? She didn’t seem to be keeping anything from you?”

  “No. There was nothing like that. We both chose to be here, to be in this relationship. No one forced us into that. And we didn’t force each other to stay. If one of us didn’t want to stay together… then we would have dealt with that.”

  “Whose name is the house in?”

  “Evie’s. But that was just for convenience. So that if we needed to sell the house, she could sign everything.”

  Margie made a note about that. And who would get the child? Evie, presumably. The courts still favored mothers over fathers. So if Vance had wanted to terminate their relationship, but to keep the house and his daughter…

  She finished her note. It wasn’t murder. There was not anything to indicate that it was anything other than what it looked like. Evie had gone out for a walk. She had fallen down the hill. End of story.

  Vance rubbed a hand over his face. “When can I get her cell phone back?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Margie and Jones exchanged glances. While they had been able to find a few credit cards, they had not turned up a wallet or purse. No cell phone. Evie’s personal effects consisted of some pocket litter and what she had been wearing when she died.

  “We have not found a cell phone,” Jones said. “Is it possible that she left it here by mistake? I know it is rare to go out without a cell phone these days, but she might have left it on the counter and meant to grab it or been distracted by something.”

  “No, I would have noticed if she had left it lying around.”

  Vance looked vaguely around the room. He again retreated to the back of the house to check the table or the counter beside the coffee pot, places where Evie might normally have lain her phone down and then not picked it up again. He wandered for a moment, then returned, shaking his head. He pulled out his own phone and dialed.

  Everyone waited in silence, ears pricked for the ringing of Evie’s cell phone, or the low rumble of a phone vibrating on a hard surface. There was no sound. Margie watched Vance’s face for any changes as he held his phone to his ear, listening to the ringing on his end, as if it might all be a mistake and Evie would answer her phone and explain it all away.

  Then his face fell. He paused for a moment, then pressed the end button on the call and slid his phone away.

  “She must have it.”

  “It wasn’t on her body. Maybe she dropped it,” Jones suggested.

  “How could this happen? How could something like this happen?” He stared at them, his eyes rimmed with red.

  There was a small noise, and Margie turned her head to see a little angel emerging from the hall that led to the bedrooms. Mussy-haired Ada went to her father. He picked her up and held his face against her head, eyes full of tears once more. How was he going to tell this little darling that her mother was dead and would never return home again?

  But he wimped out and didn’t tell her right away. Maybe he needed some more time to prepare himself. A good sign. If he had been involved in Evie’s death, then he would have been thinking of how to break it to Ada. He’d have a script prepared, something gentle and honest. He might have looked up on the internet how to break bad news to children.

  Ada took Vance’s face in her hands, one on either cheek, and rubbed her face against his.

  “Daddy owie,” she said. She rubbed her cheek with her hand, then put her hand back on his cheek and rubbed it. Margie could hear the scrape of his whiskers and understood. She smiled. Ada didn’t like the scratchiness of Vance’s whiskers.